Welcome

My name is Andreas Rejbrand and I live in Katrineholm, approximately 119 kilometres from Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. Currently, I study on the masters programme in physics (with an equal amount of mathematics) at Linköping University, where I also work as a teacher of mathematics, at the Department of Mathematics (MAI).

Mathematics and physics are indeed my main interests. Perhaps mathematics is the most important of all sciences, for all other use it. As a matter of fact, as soon you draw a logically valid conclusion, you are using mathematics. More advanced mathematics has also enabled all of our technological (and cultural!) development. My other main interest, science, with physics as the most fundamental one, offers an amazingly comprehensive understanding of every aspect of nature — including everything from the birth of the entire universe itself, to its structure, and modern-day content of starts, planets and asteroids, to the development of all the living organisms of Earth, from the very first microorganisms, to the highly complex human body. Furthermore, together with the intellectual pleasure of understanding itself, science offers every-day applications improving the life of each human and the whole of her society, as well as rational descriptions of the phenomena of nature, which may result in improved values.

Besides pure science, I am also very interested in IT and software development. I am an advanced Win32 Delphi programmer, but have basic knowledge of a large set of other techniques and languages as well. I have been programming since the age of ten, and already during my time at elementary school, I developed my first major product: the web (XHTML) editor Easy Coder, still in use by many, but discontinued by me. Also, during one week at the gymnasium (just after elementary school), I developed AlgoSim, a numerical mathematical software, that I still use every day. Today, I work on its successor, AlgoSim II, a far more advanced and ambitious project, comparable to Wolfram's Mathematica when it comes to the basic philosophy of the product. I hope to be able to present an early version of the software in a near future.

On a completely different topic, often observing immoral behaviour among humans, I am also critical to the modern society. I believe one should always be able to motivate one's actions, preferably using a system of ethical axioms. In particular, I am very supportive of animal rights. You can read more about this at the Philosophy page on my web site.

For instance, I find many Swedish TV programmes dreadful and sick. Humans fight and hurt each other without any reason. I dream of a world in which all humans are nice to all other humans and non-human animals, and where everyone tries her best to understand other persons, even when they are in minority.

I am attracted to beauty. Perhaps most importantly, I am interested in music (as a phenomenon), although I strongly dislike much of today's popular music. Among the music I love you can find Andrea Bocelli's album Cieli Di Toscana, Elton John's song Belfast, or Turtle Dove by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Classical British music and music from movies (particularly Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection, and the Harry Potter movies) also "gefällt mir". (A long, personal, article on the Harry Potter film series can be read on my web site.) Music is so much more than mere "entertainment" — music can take you to parts of your own consciousness you never visited before, and music can calm, comfort, and strengthen people, and even make them cry. However, beauty appears to be highly subjective — a clear indication of this is, of course, the fact that I dislike much of the popular music. And what about these cell phone ringtones? I would prefer an elegant, distinct, digital signal, not a song, or even worse, some kind of strange and completely out-of-context sound effect.

I am also very sensitive to some films. For instance, when I had watched Titanic last year, I woke up in the middle of the night, and felt a great sadness. It was like all the joy and happiness in the world had sunk with the ship, and all that remained in my world, was emptiness. The Phantom of the Opera (2004) was even worse. It is a truly wonderful film, partly because of the music and the vivid scenery, but also because of the film's ruthless (emotional) realism. The films that have affected me for the longest period of time, however, are the Harry Potter movies. The world depicted in the films appears so outstandingly beautiful: the great caste is so wondrous, so warm, so human. And best of all is the closeness to friends experienced by the students and teachers at Hogwarts: they live and work together, every day. One is always surrounded by a huge amount of people, a lot of whom are close friends, and maybe even love partners. It's wonderful.

Andreas Rejbrand
May 30, 2009